Long-gone Benicia brewery's past now on tap in exhibit

BENICIA -- The city's beer-brewing past -- dating back to the pre Civil War period -- is the subject of a new display at the Benicia Historical Museum.

The small exhibit, which runs through Oct. 1, features rare artifacts and little-known history relating to the long-since defunct Benicia Brewery, which was opened by Swiss immigrant John Rueger in the mid 1850s.

The old brewery operated for decades out of an adobe building previously known as the California House hotel behind the historic Capitol building on West H Street. The hotel, one of the city's oldest landmarks, was lost in a fire in 1945.

"This is my idea of the perfect local history exhibit," said Elizabeth d'Huart, executive director of the Benicia Historical Museum, also known as the Camel Barns. "The stories that you see when you read between the lines are extremely interesting ... and very personal. And it's also a small snapshot of a certain period of time."

Rueger's journey to Benicia began in Switzerland, where he learned the art of brewing after being apprenticed to a barrel maker. After a failed brewery venture in his home country, he emigrated to the United States.

Lured by the excitement of the Gold Rush, he made his way out west, at one point becoming lost in the Sierra Nevadas and going without food for 10 days, according to family lore. Eventually he was saved by Native American guides who helped him find a miners settlement near Marysville.

There, Rueger began a brewery and was a partner in the Marysville Hotel.

In 1855, however, he moved his brewing operation to Benicia, which was becoming an important shipping hub for agricultural products -- including grain -- along the narrows of Carquinez Strait. A year later, his family joined him from Detroit. Later, Rueger served a term as Benicia's city treasurer.

Rueger's grandson, Theodore Rueger, studied the science of brewing in Chicago at the American Brewing Academy. He later helped run the Benicia Brewery for 16 years. Two of his brewing journals are featured in the display.

"The binders are pretty academic ... talking about the different kinds of bacteria that can get into beer and what promotes one taste over another," museum volunteer Bob Kvasnicka said. "They're not really recipe books. We don't have, not that I know of, anyway, specific recipes for brewing the beers they brewed back then."

Another of Rueger's grandsons, Carl E. Rueger, became the first mayor of El Segundo, a suburb of Los Angeles. Grandson Godfrey Rueger, meanwhile, served as a delegate to the Republican State Convention in 1898.

In 1881, Rueger sold the brewery for $8,000 to Richard Massle and German immigrant Gustav Gnauck, who became mayor of Benicia in 1897. Gnauck married one of Rueger's daughters.

The business later changed its name to Benicia Brewing and Soda Works, possibly due to Prohibition, museum volunteers say.

"The nice thing about this exhibit is it combines an industry we had in Benicia and a family that was very prominent," Kvasnicka said. "His whole family really were interesting people."